The Headlines today in both the Sentinel and the Denver Post are all about Colorado’s Governor calling the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate into his office and telling them to stop messing around with the must pass regulatory review bill or he would call them immediately into a special session. Clearly that got the attention of the Republicans because they immediately backed off their position, removed a bill amendment that helped predatory lenders, and voted unanimously to approve the bill, thus ending this legislative session.

Now that the session is over until January of next year, we will be seeing more of our legislators at events here in the Grand Valley. When we do, we need to ask them to spend less time bickering and staking out no-win positions. We need to tell them to start focusing on jobs for Coloradans. We need to ask Steve King, Laura Bradford, and Ray Scott how much time they spend listening to ALEC instead of listening to us. (Back in February Steve King responded to an E-mail that I sent him that he would be guided by ALEC. Laura Bradford noted at a meeting I attended that she got legislative ideas at an ALEC conference in Washington. When Ray Scott was a candidate he once said he was surprised and disgusted to learn that there were people willing to write his legislation for him. He may or may not have been referring to ALEC.)

Speaking of jobs, Hickenlooper is going to a high tech company today to celebrate their jobs creation record. They help companies gather and report data to the SEC, which we should all be celebrating. By standardizing the reporting, the companies can spend less time on these regulations and yet investors will be able to read company reports knowing that information is reported uniformly across industries and companies.

Homework

GOP Backs Off--Session Ends

Predatory Lending

ALEC Writes Legislation for State Lawmakers

Hickenlooper Celebrates Rivet Software